The Fred Martinez Report

Posts

Google AI:Alasdair MacIntyre strongly rejects the liberal view of the self as a "monad" (an atomistic, self-sufficient individual). He argues that this modern conception of the individual, stripped of social roles and communal context, is a key source of the moral fragmentation in contemporary society. MacIntyre's Critique of the "Monadic" Self MacIntyre's work, particularly in After Virtue, criticizes the Enlightenment-era liberal focus on individualism and abstract universal rights. He contends that: Identity is Socially Derived: In contrast to the idea of the self as a pre-social, autonomous entity, MacIntyre argues that an individual's identity is fundamentally a "social creation". Our roles and obligations come from our place within a social network, such as family, community, and tradition.

Alasdair MacIntyre strongly rejects the liberal view of the self as a "monad" (an atomistic, self-sufficient individual). He argues that this modern conception of the individual, stripped of social roles and communal context, is a key source of the moral fragmentation in contemporary society. MacIntyre's Critique of the "Monadic" Self MacIntyre's work, particularly in After Virtue , criticizes the Enlightenment-era liberal focus on individualism and abstract universal rights. He contends that: Identity is Socially Derived : In contrast to the idea of the self as a pre-social, autonomous entity, MacIntyre argues that an individual's identity is fundamentally a "social creation". Our roles and obligations come from our place within a social network, such as family, community, and tradition. Morality Requires Context : The modern liberal attempt to establish universal moral rules for individuals in abstraction from any specific social or hi...

*Rights theory imagines human beings as monads prior to any interpersonal relations**Alasdair Maclntyre had been one of the most eloquent recent critics of the notion of natural rights. His criticisms can be attached to Villey’s effort to derive natural rights talk from the rise of nominalism and the emphasis on the individual. But Maclntyre would underscore that the individual who is the supposed carrier of rights simply does not exist. Natural rights theory imagines human beings as monads prior to any interpersonal relations, lodged in no particular culture or tradition. Since there are no such individuals, if natural rights require such individuals, natural rights are chimeric [illusion or myth]indeed.

NATURAL LAW AND HUMAN RIGHTS Ralph McInerny * In what follows, I shall do three things. First, I shall review the contrast between the natural law tradition and the modern tradition of natural or human rights, a contrast of which we have been reminded in recent times by Michel Villey and Alasdair Maclntyre. Second, I shall discuss attempts to overcome the opposition between the two traditions, particularly the suggestions of Jacques Maritain, John Finnis, and Felicien Rousseau. Third, I will comment on what seem to me to be the successes and failures of these irenic efforts. I. THE RISE OF HUMAN RIGHTS The name most readily associated with the insistence that individual rights, natural rights, are a modern innovation, having no counterpart in ancient or medieval jurisprudence, is that of Michel Villey. Over a long career, in season and out, he has argued that all efforts to find in the Aristotelian dikaion or the Roman ius anyth...

NATURAL LAW AND HUMAN RIGHTS Ralph McInern on Villey: The just, what’s fair, the dikaion or iustum is a thing, a relation or proportion, out there, to be objectively determined by the judge so that the contentions of the parties to a suit are adjusted. The shift from the just as a “thing” (in a large sense of the term, as out there, an object) to something someone or everyone has, in virtue of which one can make claims on some or all others, is fundamental and Villey traces its origins to the so-called Second Scholasticism, the Iberian renaissance at Salamanca when, because of the unnoticed inroads of nominalism, rights began to be spoken of as inherent in individuals.[2] Villey’s association of human rights and nominalism has been contested,[3] and of course Villey’s insistence would have been unnecessary if there were not many who argued for a continuum between the ancients and moderns. Perhaps no one would disagree with Villey’s reading of Aristotle, the Roman jurists, and St. Thomas Aquinas, when he argues that the just, the dikaion, ius, do not name a quality or faculty or power of individuals. That there is no suggestion whatsoever in ancient or pre-nominalist medieval thought of rights in the modern sense has been contested, however.[4] But even when Villey is accused of overkill in making his basic historical point, most critics agree that the mark of the modern is to elevate a theory of society and law on individual human rights and in this the modern surely differs from the ancient and medieval.

https://www.thomasinternational.org/ralphmc/readings/mcinerny000.htm#:~:text=The%20just%2C%20what's%20fair%2C%20the,sense%20has%20been%20contested%2C%20however. NATURAL LAW AND HUMAN RIGHTS Ralph McInerny * In what follows, I shall do three things. First, I shall review the contrast between the natural law tradition and the modern tradition of natural or human rights, a contrast of which we have been reminded in recent times by Michel Villey and Alasdair Maclntyre. Second, I shall discuss attempts to overcome the opposition between the two traditions, particularly the suggestions of Jacques Maritain, John Finnis, and Felicien Rousseau. Third, I will comment on what seem to me to be the successes and failures of these irenic efforts. I. THE RISE OF HUMAN RIGHTS The name most readily associated with the insistence that individual rights, natural rights, are a modern innovation, having no counterpart in ancient or medieval jurisprudence, is that of Michel...